The speech was mostly a rehash of
tired complaints about Israel, some of them linked to reality (occupation is
never popular) and others entirely manufactured and irresponsible.

Abbas’s low point came right at
the beginning of the speech, when he accused Israel of various crimes defiling
the Temple Mount. He said Israel is trying “to impose its plans to undermine
the Islamic and Christian sanctuaries in Jerusalem, particularly its actions at
Al-Aqsa Mosque.” This is a lie, and given the violence around the Temple Mount
in recent weeks it is the kind of lie that can create injuries and loss of life.

Abbas continues to say that
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are swallowing it up, which is simply
false: the settlements are growing in population but not expanding
territorially. As to Gaza, he said Israel “continues its blockade of the Gaza
Strip.” But his listeners surely know that it is Egypt that is
maintaining a strict blockade, while Israel supplies the vast bulk of food,
water, and electricity to Gaza. Abbas’s claim that the PA is “working on
spreading the culture of peace and coexistence” is remarkable in view of the
repeated glorification of terrorist murderers in school books and the naming of
parks and schools after them. A moment of humor, unintentional to be sure,
arrived when Abbas said “we seek to hold presidential and legislative
elections.” Elected in 2005, he is now in the eleventh year of his own four
year term and has shown zero desire to submit himself to the polls again.

As to recent history, Abbas said,
“You are all aware that Israel undermined the efforts made by the
administration of President Barack Obama in past years, most recently the
efforts of Secretary of State John Kerry aimed at reaching a peace agreement
through negotiations.” Obama administration officials have revealed that when
the crunch came in its efforts to start negotiations, Netanyahu said yes and
Abbas said no. It is therefore entirely false to make the claim he did in this
speech.

In previous speeches Abbas
insisted that he wanted nothing more than real negotiations, though he would
then set preconditions that made negotiations nearly impossible. This year, his
“bombshell” was a threat to stop negotiating at all. Blaming Israel for the
failure of negotiations is of course ahistorical: not only did Abbas say no to
Obama, but he also said no to Ehud Olmert’s generous offer in 2008—as Yasser
Arafat did to Ehud Barak’s in 2000. But never mind: now the Abbas line is that
Israel is violating its Oslo commitments. So, “they leave us no choice but to
insist that we will not remain the only ones committed to the implementation of
these agreements, while Israel continuously violates them. We therefore declare
that we cannot continue to be bound by these agreements and that Israel must
assume all of its responsibilities as an occupying power.”

That’s the
bombshell part, but what does it mean? Most likely, not much. Logically, he
should have said in the next paragraph that he was resigning as head of the PLO
and the Palestinian Authority, disbanding the PA, and closing every Palestinian
ministry and government office. He should have announced that all security and
economic cooperation with Israel was ending. He did not. Nathan Thrall, a keen
observer who is head of the International Crisis Group’s Jerusalem office,
told the New York Times that Abbas’s line was “a years-old talking point,”
“old, old, old, old news,” and “definitely not a bombshell.” Thrall
continued: “That is the minimum he could have said. They’ve been saying it
for weeks and years: we fulfill our obligations and they don’t fulfill theirs,
and we’re not bound by it if they don’t fulfill theirs and the whole thing.
I really doubt that there’s something you could really point to that’s novel
here, and more important than that, I’m certain that it does not mean any
changes practically on the ground.”

Why does Abbas talk himself into a
corner this way, where any real or rhetorical bombs that go off are likely to
injure him and his own people? Frustration, in part; politics, in part, and the
desire to say something that sounds “tough.” And in part, sadly, cynicism:
he knows as well or better than we—and his Palestinian listeners—do that
these are just more words in yet another UN speech.